Solar Power On Track to Be World’s Largest Electricity Source by 2050, Reduce Power Company Profits
October 6th, 2014Disclosure: I sell solar power systems for solarking.co.nz.
Via: Computerworld:
The sun could be the world’s leading electricity source by mid-century with the amount of new photovoltaic (PV) panel installations soaring at 100MW daily, according to a pair of new reports.
The reports, issued by the International Energy Agency (IEA), stated that by 2050, PV panels could produce 16% of the world’s electricity, while solar thermal electricity (STE) is on track to produce 11%. Solar thermal electricity is created by concentrating the sun’s rays to produce steam, which then turns a turbine.
Photovoltaic panels capable of producing 137 billion watts (gigawatts) of power have been installed worldwide since the end of 2013, according to the IEA, a Paris-based agency that advises on global energy consumption.
Perhaps just as important, solar power could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 6 billion tons over the next four decades, the reports state.
Rooftop solar panels will account for half of the world’s solar PV installations because as a distributed energy source, the technology is “unbeatable,” the report said.
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Rooftop solar panel installations could cut utility profits by 15% or more over the next eight years, according to the federally funded report (download PDF) that studied two prototypical U.S. utilities — one in the Southwest and the other in the Northeast.
